NEW YORK – After 45 years, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright's soaring spiral that has become one of Manhattan's greatest tourist attractions, will undergo a major face-lift. And while it has good bones, like many Wright buildings the Upper East Side landmark is plagued with cracks, leaks and corroding surfaces.

"The care and preservation of the Frank Lloyd Wright building has been a priority for us," said Thomas Krens, the museum's director.

Calling it "the most important piece of art in the collection," Peter B. Lewis, a Cleveland-based philanthropist, chairman of the museum's board and a trustee since 1993, has pledged to match trustee gifts 3-to-1 for the project.

So far the Guggenheim has raised $20 million from Lewis and a group of trustees. Museum officials say they need at least $5 million more and are hoping for support from the city and state as well as private donations.

The building on Fifth Avenue at 89th Street will remain open during the restoration, which is expected to take two years. In addition to removing nine coats of paint, right down to the building's structure, to properly fix its cracking surface, the project also includes repairing the sidewalk, with its metallic rings set into concrete. Inside the building, the terrazzo floor in the main rotunda will also be restored, and the climate control and security systems updated.

Architecture draws crowds

Since it opened in 1959, drawing huge crowds and controversy because of its design, the building, with its spiraled interior rising 96 feet, has been the primary reason many people go to the Guggenheim. A Gallup poll taken in early 1960 showed that nearly four out of every 10 visitors (38 percent) said they came to the Guggenheim specifically for the building; 53 percent said they came to see both the building and the collection, and only 5 percent said they came just for the art.

Today's audiences are much the same, museum officials say. After the Sept. 11 attacks, when tourism to New York plummeted, so did the Guggenheim's attendance. Although it fell more than 50 percent in October 2001, the overall decline in the fourth quarter was only 17 percent.

Museum surveys show that for the 900,000 to 1 million people who visit every year, the building consistently ranked over the art as the reason for visiting. Architecture buffs say the Guggenheim is Wright's most visited building and his only major commission in New York City.

Neither the building's design, which was commissioned by the Guggenheim in 1943, nor its construction, went smoothly. The only builder Wright could find to execute his drawings economically was a man whose expertise was in constructing parking garages and freeways. The building's outer wall was made by spraying layers of gunite (a mixture of sand and cement commonly used to line swimming pools) from within the building, through steel reinforcements, against pieces of plywood that were molded into the building's shape. Every few years the exterior is patched and painted, but the cosmetic touches camouflage far deeper problems.

In extremely cold weather, moisture from the skylights and windows that have not been sufficiently insulated drips down on some interior walls. Long, stuffed tubes of absorbent material, giant sponges that resemble blue sausages (the museum calls them socks), are placed along perimeter floors to absorb condensation. In the rotunda, some socks have been discreetly tucked behind paintings hung on brackets away from the walls. The museum has also had to deal with leaking pipes.

Damage assessment

Earlier this year the museum hired Swanke Hayden Connell Architects, a Manhattan firm perhaps best known for restoring the Statue of Liberty, to assess the condition of the building.

Gwathmey Siegel & Associates, Manhattan architects, has also been consulted. No stranger to the Guggenheim, Gwathmey Siegel renovated the interior of the building in 1992 and added a 10-story tower loosely inspired by Wright's original drawings.

For 16 years under Krens, the Guggenheim has focused on forging an international network of museums. It now has locations in Venice; Berlin; Las Vegas; and Bilbao, Spain, along with partnerships with the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Krens has set his sights on building other Guggenheims around the world using world-class architects as part of the attraction, as he did with the Guggenheim Bilbao, by Frank Gehry. In the planning stages is a $130 million museum on Maua Pier in Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro, by the Paris architect Jean Nouvel. A feasibility study was completed last fall for a Guggenheim Taichung in Taiwan, designed by the Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid.

The New York restoration is the beginning of what the museum hopes will be a larger capital initiative. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which owns the museum, is considering creating new amenities like public access to the rotunda roof. Much like the Metropolitan Museum of Art's popular sculpture roof terrace, the roof of the Guggenheim has stunning views of the city and could be transformed into a sculpture garden.

Also under consideration is converting offices on the ninth floor of the Gwathmey Siegel tower into a restaurant and relocating those offices to SoHo, where the majority of the staff now work. The foundation is also considering reinforcing the Gehry-designed canopy on the museum's fifth floor. (In 2001 the New York City Landmarks Commission gave the museum a six-year permit for the structure, a large stainless steel sculptural form that sits above the museum's sculpture terrace.) Charles Gwathmey said that in addition to the restoration of the facade, his firm plans to be working on designing these future projects.

Since joining the museum's board 11 years ago, Lewis has been the institution's biggest donor. This is the fourth major gift he has made to the Guggenheim, bringing his donations to more than $77 million.

The addition of two real estate developers to the board – William Mack, founder and managing partner of Apollo Real Estate Advisers, and Stephen M. Ross, founder and chief executive of the Related Companies – in October has helped provide the expertise for restoring the Wright building.